arXiv subjects

Denes Molnar

Publications and source records attributed to Denes Molnar.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2020

Self-consistent conversion of a one-component bulk viscous fluid to particles

Comparison of heavy-ion experiments to fluid dynamics simulations requires the conversion of the fluid to particles. Extending the approach in Molnar & Wolff, PRC 95, 024903 (2017), this work presents self-consistent bulk viscous corrections from kinetic theory for a one-component system with isotropic $2\to 2$ interactions. The phase space corrections are contrasted to the Grad ansatz and also to corrections obtained from the relaxation time approximation. In addition, the bulk viscosity of the system is calculated and compared with the Grad result, as well as the $\zeta \propto (1 - 3 c_s^2)^2 \eta$ relation between shear and bulk viscosity near the conformal limit. The possible influence of various bulk correction choices on differential elliptic flow $v_2(p_T)$ in heavy-ion collisions is also estimated.

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arXiv2019

Suppression of elliptic flow without viscosity

We investigate fluid-to-particle conversion using the usual Cooper-Frye approach but with more general local equilibrium distributions than the Boltzmann or Bose/Fermi distributions typically used. Even though we study ideal fluids (i.e., shear stress and bulk pressure are zero everywhere), we find a suppression of elliptic flow (v2) at high transverse momenta (pT>1.5 GeV/c), relative to results obtained with the traditional Boltzmann distributions. The non-viscous suppression shows qualitatively similar features to the well-known shear viscous suppression of v2; for example, it increases with pT, and it is smaller for heavier species as seen in self-consistent kinetic theory calculations. Our results question whether all of the v2 suppression seen in the data can be attributed to viscous effects, and indicate that shear viscosities extracted from RHIC and LHC elliptic flow data might be overestimated.

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arXiv2019

How AMPT generates large elliptic flow with small cross sections

We resolve the long-standing open question of how the transport model AMPT manages to generate sufficiently high elliptic flow (v2) in A+A reactions with only few-millibarn 2->2 partonic cross sections - in apparent contradiction with an early study by Molnar and Gyulassy. Through detailed comparisons with the covariant Molnar's Parton Cascade (MPC), we pinpoint which features of initial conditions, interactions, and dynamics encoded in the partonic stage of AMPT allow it to circumvent the "opacity puzzle" at RHIC.

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arXiv2017

Origin of the mass splitting of azimuthal anisotropies in a multi-phase transport model

Both hydrodynamics-based models and a multi-phase transport (AMPT) model can reproduce the mass splitting of azimuthal anisotropy ($v_n$) at low transverse momentum ($p_{\perp}$) as observed in heavy ion collisions. In the AMPT model, however, $v_n$ is mainly generated by the parton escape mechanism, not by the hydrodynamic flow. In this study we provide detailed results on the mass splitting of $v_n$ in this transport model, including $v_2$ and $v_3$ of various hadron species in d+Au and Au+Au collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and p+Pb collisions at the Large Hadron Collider. We show that the mass splitting of hadron $v_2$ and $v_3$ in AMPT first arises from the kinematics in the quark coalescence hadronization process, and then, more dominantly, comes from hadronic rescatterings, even though the contribution from the latter to the overall charged hadron $v_n$ is small. We further show that there is no qualitative difference between heavy ion collisions and small-system collisions or between elliptic ($v_2$) and triangular ($v_3$) anisotropies. Our studies thus demonstrate that the mass splitting of $v_2$ and $v_3$ at low-$p_{\perp}$ is not a unique signature of hydrodynamic collective flow but can be the interplay of several physics effects.

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arXiv2017

Flow harmonics from self-consistent particlization of a viscous fluid

The quantitative extraction of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) properties from heavy-ion data, such as its specific shear viscosity $η/s$, typically requires comparison to viscous hydrodynamic or "hybrid" hydrodynamics+transport simulations. In either case, one has to convert the fluid to hadrons, yet without additional theory input the conversion is ambiguous for dissipative fluids. Here, shear viscous phase-space corrections calculated using linearized transport theory are applied in Cooper-Frye freezeout to quantify the effects on anisotropic flow coefficients $v_n(p_T)$ at both RHIC and LHC energies. Expanding upon our previous flow harmonics studies [1,2], we calculate pion and proton $v_2(p_T)$, $v_4(p_T)$, and $v_6(p_T)$. Unlike in Ref. [1], we incorporate a hadron gas that is chemically frozen below a temperature of 175 MeV, and use hypersurfaces from realistic viscous hydrodynamic simulations. With additive quark model cross sections and relative phase-space corrections with $p^{3/2}$ momentum dependence, rather than the quadratic Grad form, we find at moderately high transverse momentum noticeably higher $v_4(p_T)$ and $v_6(p_T)$ for protons than for pions. In addition, the value of $η/s$ deduced from elliptic flow data differs by nearly 50\% from the value extracted using the naive "democratic Grad" form of freeze-out distributions. To facilitate the use of the self-consistent viscous corrections calculated here in hydrodynamic and hybrid calculations, we also present convenient parameterizations of the corrections for the various hadron species (cf. Table I).

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arXiv2017

Testing and improving shear viscous phase space correction models

Comparison of hydrodynamic calculations with experimental data inevitably requires a model for converting the fluid to particles. In this work, nonlinear $2\to 2$ kinetic theory is used to assess the overall accuracy of various shear viscous fluid-to-particle conversion models, such as the quadratic Grad corrections, the Strickland-Romatschke (SR) ansatz, self-consistent shear corrections from linearized kinetic theory, and the correction from the relaxation time approach. We test how well the conversion models can reconstruct, using solely the hydrodynamic fields computed from the transport, the phase space density for a massless one-component gas undergoing a 0+1D longitudinal boost-invariant expansion with approximately constant specific shear viscosity in the range $\sim 0.03 \le η/s \le \sim 0.2$. In general we find that at early times the SR form is the most accurate, whereas at late times or for small $η/s\sim 0.05$ the self-consistent corrections from kinetic theory perform the best. In addition, we show that the reconstruction accuracy of additive shear viscous $f = f_{\rm eq} + δf$ models dramatically improves if one ensures, through "exponentiation", that $f$ is always positive. We also illustrate how even more accurate viscous $δf$ models can be constructed if one includes information about the past evolution of the system via the first time derivative of hydrodynamic fields. Such time derivatives are readily available in hydrodynamic simulations, though usually not included in the output.

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arXiv2017

Self-consistent conversion of a viscous fluid to particles

Comparison of hydrodynamic and "hybrid" hydrodynamics+transport calculations to heavy-ion data inevitably requires the conversion of the fluid to particles. For dissipative fluids the conversion is ambiguous without additional theory input complementing hydrodynamics. We obtain self-consistent shear viscous phase space corrections from linearized Boltzmann transport theory for a gas of hadrons. These corrections depend on the particle species, and incorporating them in Cooper-Frye freezeout affects identified particle observables. For example, with additive quark model cross sections,proton elliptic flow is larger than pion elliptic flow at moderately high $p_T$ in $Au+Au$ collisions at RHIC. This is in contrast to Cooper-Frye freezeout with the commonly used "democratic Grad" ansatz that assumes no species dependence. Various analytic and numerical results are also presented for massless and massive two-component mixtures to aid the interpretation. Self-consistent viscous corrections for each species are tabulated in Appendix F for convenient inclusion in pure hydrodynamic and hybrid calculations.

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arXiv2016

Origin of the mass splitting of elliptic anisotropy in a multiphase transport model

The mass splitting of elliptic anisotropy ($v_2$) at low transverse momentum is considered as a hallmark of hydrodynamic collective flow. We investigate a multiphase transport (AMPT) model where the $v_2$ is mainly generated by an anisotropic escape mechanism, not of the hydrodynamic flow nature, and where mass splitting is also observed. We demonstrate that the $v_2$ mass splitting in AMPT is small right after hadronization (especially when resonance decays are included); the mass splitting mainly comes from hadronic rescatterings, even though their contribution to the overall charged hadron $v_2$ is small. These findings are qualitatively the same as those from hybrid models that combine hydrodynamics with a hadron cascade. We further show that there is no qualitative difference between heavy ion collisions and small system collisions. Our results indicate that the $v_2$ mass splitting is not a unique signature of hydrodynamic collective flow and thus cannot distinguish whether the elliptic flow is generated mainly from hydrodynamics or the anisotropic parton escape.

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arXiv2016

Anisotropic parton escape is the dominant source of azimuthal anisotropy in transport models

We trace the development of elliptic anisotropy ($v_2$) via parton-parton collision history in two transport models. The parton $v_2$ is studied as a function of the number of collisions of each parton in Au+Au and $d$+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{_{\rm NN}}}=200$ GeV. It is found that the majority of $v_2$ comes from the anisotropic escape probability of partons, with no fundamental difference at low and high transverse momenta. The contribution to $v_2$ from hydrodynamic-type collective flow is found to be small. Only when the parton-parton cross-section is set unrealistically large does this contribution start to take over. Our findings challenge the current paradigm emerged from hydrodynamic comparisons to anisotropy data.

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arXiv2015

Elliptic Anisotropy $v_2$ May Be Dominated by Particle Escape instead of Hydrodynamic Flow

It is commonly believed that azimuthal anisotropies in relativistic heavy ion collisions are generated by hydrodynamic evolution of the strongly interacting quark-gluon plasma. Here we use transport models to study how azimuthal anisotropies depend on the number of collisions that each parton suffers. We find that the majority of $v_2$ comes from the anisotropic escape of partons, not from the parton collective flow, for semi-central Au+Au collisions at 200A GeV. As expected, the fraction of $v_2$ from the anisotropic particle escape is even higher for smaller systems such as d+Au. Our transport model results also confirm that azimuthal anisotropies would be dominated by hydrodynamic flow at unrealistically-high parton cross sections. Our finding thus naturally explains the similarity of azimuthal anisotropies in small and large systems; however, it presents a challenge to the paradigm of anisotropic flow.

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arXiv2014

Self-consistent Cooper-Frye freeze-out of a viscous fluid to particles

Comparing hydrodynamic simulations to heavy-ion data inevitably requires the conversion of the fluid to particles. This conversion, typically done in the Cooper-Frye formalism, is ambiguous for viscous fluids. We compute self-consistent phase space corrections by solving the linearized Boltzmann equation and contrast the solutions to those obtained using the ad-hoc "democratic Grad" ansatz typically employed in the literature where coefficients are independent of particle dynamics. Solutions are calculated analytically for a massless gas and numerically for both a pion-nucleon gas and for the general case of a hadron resonance gas. We find that the momentum dependence of the corrections in all systems investigated is best fit by a power close to 3/2 rather than the typically used quadratic ansatz. The effects on harmonic flow coefficients $v_2$ and $v_4$ are substantial, and should be taken into account when extracting medium properties from experimental data.

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arXiv2014

Interplay between bulk medium evolution and (D)GLV energy loss

We study the consistency between high-pT nuclear suppression (R_AA) and elliptic flow (v2) using Gyulassy-Levai-Vitev (GLV) energy loss or a simpler power-law dE/dL formula, for a variety of bulk evolution models. The results generally confirm our earlier work [arXiv:1305.1046] that found suppressed elliptic flow for transversely expanding media. One exception is the set of hydrodynamic solutions used recently [arXiv:1305.6458] by Betz and Gyulassy, which give significantly higher v2 but unfortunately assume unrealistic bag-model equation of state. On the other hand, we show that covariant treatment of energy loss introduces an interplay between jet direction and hydrodynamic flow of the medium, which largely counteracts elliptic flow suppression caused by transverse expansion.

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arXiv2014

Momentum anisotropy in nuclear collisions from quantum mechanics

We point out that the intrinsic relationship between space and momentum in quantum physics through the uncertainty principle has potential implications for momentum anisotropy in heavy-ion collisions. Using a harmonic oscillator potential we calculate the elliptic anisotropy and find it to be sizeable compared to elliptic flow measurements in nuclear collisions. Our results question the validity of the completely hydrodynamic interpretation of anisotropic flow data, and highlight the importance of including quantum physics in hydrodynamic calculations which has largely been neglected so far.

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arXiv2013

High-pT suppression and elliptic flow from radiative energy loss with realistic bulk medium expansion

We investigate nuclear suppression and elliptic flow in A+A reactions using Gyulassy-Levai-Vitev (GLV) radiative energy loss with the covariant transport MPC for bulk medium evolution. At both RHIC and LHC energies, we find that inclusion of realistic transverse expansion for the medium strongly suppresses elliptic flow at high p_T compared to calculations with longitudinal Bjorken expansion only. We argue that this is a generic feature of GLV energy loss. Transverse expansion also enhances the high-p_T suppression, while fluctuations in energy loss with the rescattering location of the jet parton in the medium lead to weaker suppression and smaller elliptic flow. However, unlike the strong reduction of elliptic flow with transverse expansion, these latter effects get nearly washed out once calculations are adjusted to reproduce R_AA in central collisions.

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arXiv2012

Generating random thermal momenta

Generation of random thermal particle momenta is a basic task in many problems, such as microscopic studies of equilibrium and transport properties of systems, or the conversion of a fluid to particles. In heavy-ion physics, the (in)efficiency of the algorithm matters particularly in hybrid hydrodynamics + hadronic transport calculations. With popular software packages, such as UrQMD 3.3p1 or THERMINATOR, it can still take ten hours to generate particles for a single Pb+Pb "event" at the LHC from fluid dynamics output. Below I describe reasonably efficient simple algorithms using the MPC package, which should help speed momentum generation up by at least one order of magnitude. It is likely that this wheel has been reinvented many times instead of reuse, so there may very well exist older and/or better algorithms that I am not aware of (MPC has been around only since 2000). The main goal here is to encourage practitioners to use available efficient routines, and offer a few practical solutions.

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arXiv2012

Realistic medium-averaging in radiative energy loss

We present results from a jet energy loss calculation using the Gyulassy-Levai-Vitev (GLV) formalism and bulk medium evolution from the covariant transport model MPC. At both RHIC and LHC energies we find that realistic transverse expansion strongly reduces elliptic flow at high pT compared to calculations with transversely 'frozen' profiles. We argue that this is a generic feature of GLV energy loss. Transverse expansion also leads to stronger high-pT suppression, while fluctuations in energy loss with the location of scattering centers weaken the suppression. But, unlike the reduction of v2, these effects nearly disappear once alpha_s is adjusted to reproduce R_AA in central collisions.

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arXiv2011

Identified particles from viscous hydrodynamics

Identified particle observables from viscous hydrodynamics are sensitive to the fluid-to-particle conversion. Instead of the commonly assumed "democratic" Grad ansatz for phase space corrections $δf$, we utilize corrections calculated from linearized covariant transport theory. Estimates based on a pion-proton system with binary collisions indicate that protons are much closer to equilibrium than pions, significantly affecting the dissipative reduction of differential elliptic flow in Au+Au at RHIC. In addition, we test linear response against fully nonlinear transport for a two-component massless system in a Bjorken scenario. Strikingly, we find that, while linear response accounts well for the dynamical sharing of shear stress, the momentum dependence of phase space corrections is best described by Grad's quadratic ansatz, and not the linear response solution.

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arXiv2009

Applicability of viscous hydrodynamics at RHIC

In an earlier work (arXiv:0808.0953) we established that causal Israel-Stewart viscous hydrodynamics is only accurate in RHIC applications at very low shear viscosities 4 pi eta_s / s < ~ 1.5-2. We show here that the region of applicability is significantly reduced if bulk viscosity plays a role in the dynamics.

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